For many high school juniors and seniors aspiring to college degrees, touring prospective schools is a critical part of the application process. Just as you probably wouldn’t buy a car without a test drive and a peak under the hood, you likely wouldn’t commit to a multiyear course of study without kicking the campus tires, so to speak.
Unfortunately, for many students this experience was abruptly taken away due to COVID-related restrictions during the ongoing pandemic.
So when PESA recently received a request from Los Angeles Learning Academy (LALA) asking if we could give a group of their seniors the opportunity to go on a tour of UCLA—one of the country’s top universities and the number-one destination for students transferring from Southern California community colleges—we jumped at the task. A team was created to provide a tour of the campus to nine LALA seniors who had previously missed out on the experience that many of their peers had enjoyed the previous year.
With the application deadline looming, PESA’s Assistant Director of Youth Services, Nataly Kemdjian, herself a recent graduate of UCLA, went to work developing a tour and figuring out how to get these students to the campus. “I recalled when I went on my own tour of UCLA about three years ago,” Kemdjian says, “all the fun facts about UCLA and the jokes the tour guides told. It made such a positive impression that it helped me in my decision to apply to UCLA, and I didn’t want any of these students missing out on having that same, unforgettable experience.” She quickly gathered information about the campus, supplemented it with firsthand recollections of her own experiences as a first-generation transfer student and created a tour of UCLA that PESA could use immediately and for future use for years to come. The effort paid off.
“I feel like I got an inside look at the campus,” says Sophia Rivas, vice president of the student council at LALA. “Nataly went into depth with each and every one of us and touched on [a diverse array] of experiences.”
Providing equal opportunities for our community’s youth is an important PESA vision. Helping students get a leg up on the college experience is just one of the ways we do that. Your support of PESA ensures those efforts continue. ■
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